1. Field of the Invention
The present invention concerns a harvesting machine for small fruit produced in orchards, especially in olive groves, for the harvesting or picking of olives. More precisely, the invention is attached to the picking head of this machine.
2. Description of Related Art Including Information Disclosed Under 37 CFR 1.97 and 37 CFR 1.98.
Grape picking machines are known which feature a picking head which includes a shaking system consisting of two berry detaching assemblies mounted opposite to each other and containing each a number of stacked shakers consisting for example of small flexible bars, fastened, by the intermediary of their ends, to two vertical shafts of which at least one is an oscillating actuation shaft linked to a shaking control imparting an oscillating movement to it.
There are also grape picking machines with two shaking systems placed one after the other, at the same height, in order to increase efficiency with respect to the dropping rate of the grapes. This configuration, however, causes many vine branches to break because of the repetitious strikes in the same area and creates balancing problems so that the results are unsatisfactory.
Certain manufacturers of equipment for the olive-oil industry have proposed to raise the height of the shaking assemblies of the classic fruit picking machines to adapt it to the height of olive trees.
However, increasing the height of the harvesting system has its limits, as it does not permit by itself to resolve the particular problems associated with the harvesting of small fruit grown on fruit trees and bushes of great height and laid out in line, especially in olive-groves.
One of these problems is the necessarily reduced clearance height of the straddling carrier, i.e., the clearance height under the chassis of the latter (generally in the range of 2.2 m corresponding to a shaking height in the range of 1.8 m behind which the actual harvesting machine is mounted or hitched up. To alleviate this problem, the olive growers keep olive hedge-rows fairly low so as to be able to straddle them, which has the drawback of limiting the yield of trees grown with a reduced height.
The second problem derives from the manufacture of shaking systems with a large number of stacked picking arm pairs (a dozen of stacked picking arm pairs is considered to be the maximum). The drawback of such a design is to cause unbearable vibrations for the driver of the machine, these vibrations being also detrimental to the reliability of the shaking system because of the overload of picking arms mounted on a single oscillating shaft.
One goal of the invention is to solve the problems posed by harvesting machines of small fruit, olives in particular, primarily noteworthy for an increase in the height of the shaking systems of the classic harvesting machines.